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Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Despite the last caveat, let's apply these descriptions to Internet communications anyway. To date, multi-user spaces have attempted to create the absolutely objective POV. The subjective POV has been completely ignored, or actively suppressed. There are a priori limitations to attaining objective communication in realspace, and there are also a priori limitations to internet communications. Therefore, simultaneity can only exist as an abstract ideal. This isn't to say that we should stop striving to close the gaps to achieve a synchronous nirvana, but we're doing at the expense and suppression of the individual end-user. In the battle between objective and subjective, when we're talking about Internet or Realtime Communications, the subjective wins by default.

I call this The Triumph of the Subjective.

Technologically, after all, my computer's specs are different than yours. Additionally, my internet connection speed is different from yours (as well as how I connect). So is my monitor measurements, screen size, and resolution. Psychologically, my perception of information is probably different than yours. How I evaluate said information is probably different from yours as well. Additionally, my color perception, vision acuity and hearing are probably different too. Jung originally saw objectivity and subjectivity as a dichotomy, an abstract and strict either/or : either it's a global view or an individual view. The power of imagination is that we can navigate the full spectrum of a bi-polar model, describing shades of gray between black and white. The power of computer technology is that we can illustrate those descriptions and share them with others. "Look, this is how Isee this." With technological and psychological differences amongst every end user, we should take advantage of those differences and embrace the subjective just as much as we strive to create sameness and achieve absolute objectivity, and help people communicate, and understand, both.

With objectivity, until you have well defined Subjective points of view, you can't begin to find out what they have in common (pulling things into overlapping centripetal Objectivity).